granny's pancake, coconut explosion

When I think of Min Jiang Kueh, I think of Granny's Pancake. Not that my grandmother can make Min Jiang Kueh. But because this is the BEST the BEST coconut Min Jiang Kueh. I have yet to come across another stall that even comes close. Balestier/Whampoa dwellers will almost always know this stall, it's like a household name.

The queue is very long, especially on Sunday mornings around 9am. I was there at 8am, 8!! And there was a relatively long queue already. Not to worry, the queue moves fast. They do not sell out till around noon, so you still can get your fix if you go later.

The coconut is goodness-gracious-me-super-shiokkk (with three Ks). It's so juicy and unbelievably fragrant. Bess (the store owner) says that the secret is in frying the coconut first. I can't overemphasize how juicy it is. When I first bit into it and the coconut fillings fell apart in my mouth, I could literally suckle on them and it was good. It was so good. It is so good we crave these almost every weekend. I could taste the coconut, the sugars.. It's so juicy the coconut filling lumps together, so you get morsels of extreme coconut goodness.

Another reason why this pancake is so good is because they are very generous with the amount of coconut filling they give. Just look at how the pancake is bursting and the filling overflows! Most other places don't even give half the amount of filling.

We should also highlight that the kueh is very good. It's very very fluffy (as you can see), like they beat pockets of air into the batter. Sharon likens it to a honeycomb, which I find very apt, because it is so light and not overly dense like many other commercialised places (go figure). It is superbly moist with a hint of sweetness so it's good by itself.

They don't put it on the pan for very long, so that only the tip of the top is browned, and it is perfectly and evenly browned throughout. It looks like it's a separate layer all by itself, as if it is wearing a golden crown. The rest of the kueh is deliciously white and cushy, a little undercooked and moist. The batter is mixed very evenly so don't worry about lumps of flour.

The red bean pancake. It's more like an pan than tausar, because it's not very sweet. Elderly folk particularly like this because it's not very sweet at all. Shally loves these and will have them every week if she could. Sharon, on the other hand, did not take to them. She felt that there was not enough filling and that the tausar was not aromatic. I thought that the tausar was good, the kueh was good, but the combination of the two wasn't not good, because the tausar was a bit too genteel for a traditional kueh like this. It was neither oily nor robust enough. It was too mild-tasting.

The peanut pancake was average. The peanut was not pang enough, like it was not sufficiently roasted. The peanut taste was shrouded and did not shine though. The texture was good though, because the ground peanut was neither too coarse nor too fine. The filling was very crunchy because they used coarse sugar instead of fine sugar. Combine that with the plush, moist kueh, and you're set for a sensory rollercoaster. (You can actually see the sugar granules mingled with the ground peanut.)

With the like of Granny's Pancake, I don't understand why people are still eating those mass-produced min jiang kuehs. They taste half as good at twice the price. Someone should do a Breadtalk, and bring a proper good traditional min jiang kueh into Orchard Road, package and market it well, twiddle thumbs and watch his bank account grow.

Granny's Pancake
Whampoa Market
# 01-28